We’ve been buying our Kenyan coffees through Vava for three years and last year had the opportunity to take an unforgettable journey, travelling across the country, visiting growing regions and producers, and culminating in a week of coffee training with young people in Lamu through her social enterprise business.

Vava Coffee Ltd exports coffee, roasts for local consumption and consults on coffee value chains. The organization aims to contribute to better prospects for coffee communities and the industry as a whole., ensuring sustainable livelihoods for the people and communities in which it works. Vava’s vision is to challenge the status quo and promote positive social disruption within the coffee industry. This vision comes from an inborn passion for transformative change and a drive to promote the sustainable production of coffee by tracing the production of high quality coffee beans to the independent smallholder coffee farmer, who works day in and day out, against major obstacles and with meagre resources to produce some of the world’s best tasting coffees, often without an understanding or appreciation of the final fruits of their labour.

Uasin Gishu County is one of the 47 counties of Kenya located in the former Rift Valley Province. The topography is a gentle slope, declining from the east at 2,700 masl to the west at around 1,500 masl. The high altitude, and a cool and temperate climate here make the land well suited to coffee growing.

The county is best known for its maize production, with vast commercial farms which also provide domestic consumption. More recently, some farmers have transitioned to coffee growing, anticipating higher returns, “Coffee is better since once you have planted you don’t need to re-plant like maize and other crops. You just prune or cut the branches for new cycle.”

Being a relatively new coffee growing region, there is a real need for extensive training for better crop production and the county government have been promoting coffee to encourage an increase in production as well as delivering training aimed at improving and providing transparency on processing practices.

So far, a total of around 1,000 farmers have transitioned into coffee farming in this county, with around 1,300,000 seedlings being planted.

Riuru 11 was developed following a coffee berry disease (CBD) epidemic in 1968 that decimated 50% of Kenya's coffee production. In response, an intensive breeding program was established in the 1970s at the Coffee Research Station in Riuru. The program focused on creating a compact variety suitable for intensive planting, with high yields and excellent cup quality.

In 1985, Riuru 11 was released. This variety is a complex hybrid created through a two-step process. First, varieties chosen for CBD resistance (Rume Sudan, Timor Hybrid, K7) were crossed with others selected for good cup quality (N39, SL28, SL34, Bourbon). The resulting progeny was then crossed with various Catimor lines, chosen for their compact size and resistance to both CBD and leaf rust.

SL28 is one of Africa's most renowned and esteemed coffee varieties. Scott Laboratories originally selected it in the 1930s from a drought-resistant population in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). The initial tree caught attention due to its resistance to both drought and disease. SL28 was then developed through pedigree selection—a breeding method where ancestry records are meticulously maintained. In this process, selected parent plants are crossed, and their offspring are carefully segregated. Seeds from plants displaying desired traits are chosen and grown over several generations until the characteristics stabilize.

Initially widespread in Kenya, SL28 has since expanded to other African regions and even Latin America. Recent genetic studies have linked SL28 to the Bourbon genetic group. It's highly valued for its superb cup quality, especially when grown at high altitudes. While SL28 is drought-tolerant, it remains susceptible to major diseases. Remarkably, it's known for its resilience to minimal plantation management—even 60-year-old, neglected trees can remain highly productive.

This process was designed to minimise the danger of off-flavours caused by uncontrolled fermentation during the natural process. The cherries are usually sorted using a floatation tank where any under-ripe or defective fruits will float to the top and can be removed. The remaining cherries are then pulped and left in a tank to ferment until the sticky fruit mucilage is soft enough to be washed off the parchment, which is a paper-like layer surrounding the seed.

The design and cleanliness of the tanks is important, and the degree and speed of fermentation will depend on many variables including how much fruit remains, what bacteria and yeasts are present, whether the tank is filled with water, and the environmental conditions.
Once the mucilage has degraded sufficiently it is washed away using water and the remaining parchment coffee, as it’s commonly called, is dried until it reaches a safe moisture content. The bacteria and sugar-rich water used in the process needs to be treated carefully as it can cause algae blooms if it finds its way into streams and rivers.

In situations where large amounts of coffee is processed in bulk like Ethiopia, it has proven economical for some operations to use a mechanical demucilager, removing all the fruit from the parchment with minimal water, and foregoing the fermentation stage completely. This however, is believed by some to lead to a reduction in cup quality as many pre-cursors for flavour are created through fermentation.